CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
"I don't know, it just doesn't feel right."
Jane rolled her eyes as Sirius put the Beater's bat back onto the display.
"It looks exactly like your old one!" Jane complained.
"It didn't feel like it though," Sirius replied, picking up another bat.
"What exactly happened to your old one?" Remus asked.
"Pyromaniac over here destroyed it," Sirius said in a bitter voice, pointing back at Jane.
"You threw it at my face!"
"I didn't mean to," Sirius defended. "Besides, you could've ducked; you didn't have to incinerate it."
"It was a reaction," Jane said. "I already had my wand in my hand; it just happened."
"It was your reaction to turn something to ash? That's scary, Janie. I fear for the next person to annoy you," Sirius said.
"I haven't set you on fire yet, have I?" Jane mumbled.
"Fair point," Sirius mumbled back which made Jane crack a small smile.
Jane's eye landed on a red book titled: Three Hoops, One Guardian: The Ultimate Keeper's Guide. She sighed and once again looked around for Will. She had hoped that maybe he'd be in Diagon Alley that day. So far, no such luck was with her. Jane sighed again. It had been a long shot anyway.
"You keep sighing like that, someone might think something's wrong," Remus told her.
Jane just chuckled a bit, walking away from the bookshelf and busying herself with Quidditch boots; her toes were beginning to feel a bit cramped in her own. Remus just followed her, his hands shoved in his pockets.
"So, what exactly are you thinking of that's causing you to sigh like that?" Remus pressed.
"Maybe it's not a what; maybe it's more of a who," Jane said.
"And who would that be?" Remus asked. "Anyone I should tell James about?"
Jane playfully pushed him before grabbing a box of brown Quidditch boots in her size. She plopped down on the floor of the aisle and began to pull off her shoes. Remus sat down beside her.
"James already knows about him," Jane said, tugging on one of the boots and lacing it up. "Actually, after the Ravenclaw game last term, I'm pretty sure the entire school knows about him."
"I was under the impression that you had no feelings for MacGregor," Remus said.
"I never said that," Jane said, motioning for him to hand her the other boot. "I said that I wasn't ready for a relationship."
"And are you now?" Remus asked, handing her the Quidditch boot.
Jane shrugged.
"It's been well over a year now. I feel like I'm back to normal. And…I don't know; I don't wanna miss my shot, you know?"
"Nope," Remus said. "I don't know. You see, unlike you, I don't have people interested in me."
Remus stood back up as Jane finished lacing up the second boot.
"You don't know that," Jane said, holding out her hands to him.
Remus rolled his eyes.
"You're so lazy," he said, grabbing her hands and pulling her to her feet.
"Lennox Sterling seems to like you," Jane said, walking over to a mirror. "You should talk to her more often. She's smart; she's sweet; she laughs at everything you say, and Remus, you may be funny but you're not that funny."
"I'm incredibly funny!" Remus scoffed.
"That's not the point," Jane said, looking at the boots and wiggling her toes.
Remus sighed.
"Lennox is a nice girl. She could do way better than me," Remus said quietly. "There are tons of better guys out there."
Jane rolled her eyes.
"Like who?"
"Oh, I don't know, like anybody who's not a monster," Remus whispered to her harshly.
The light air of the conversation quickly fled, and Jane's heart seemed to sink into her stomach. She whipped around to face Remus.
"Don't say that!" she snapped. "Don't you ever say that."
"Well, it's true."
"No, it's not!" Jane said.
"Yeah, it kind of is, but I don't feel like having this conversation with you right now, so…"
Remus turned and walked out of the shop Jane made to follow him.
"Oy! Miss! You have to pay for those!" the wizard behind the counter called, and Jane sighed as she stopped short of the door.
"And what exactly was that about?" Sirius asked as Jane returned and began to tug off the new boots.
"When's he gonna stop referring to himself as a monster?" Jane asked, frowning at the boots on her feet as she continued to tug at them.
"Unlace them first, Jane," James said.
Jane sighed in frustration. She didn't have time to unlace them. She wanted to run after Remus and make him feel better. James sat on the floor in front of her and began unlacing her boots as Jane huffed and leaned against a shelf.
Sirius was swinging his new Beater's bat from somewhere beside them and Peter was staring warily at the box that held the Bludgers.
"I can't believe he sees himself that way," Jane said as James tugged off one of her boots and put it back in its box. "It's awful."
"His family had to move again over the summer," Peter piped up. "I think that's why he's less tolerable of—well, of what he is today."
"Well, he never said anything about it," Jane said.
"It's taking a toll on him," James said as he unlaced Jane's other boot. "Every year he seems to kind of hate himself a little more. And Jane's right; it's awful."
"He's such a good person. He's one of the most caring people I've ever met. He shouldn't feel the way he does," Jane said.
"And he's never even hurt anybody," Peter said quietly. "Imagine how he'd feel if he accidentally did."
"Shut up, Wormtail," all three of the friends said simultaneously; that was the last thing they wanted to be thinking about right then.
James sighed as he tugged the other boot off of Jane's foot and handed her her shoes.
"You hear all the time in the Prophet about how people are working on cures, but there's never any real development," James said.
"I don't read the Prophet anymore," Peter said. "It's too depressing."-
"It may be, but that's the world we're living in," Sirius said.
Jane slipped on her shoes as an idea popped into her head. She pushed the box of Quidditch boots towards James and sat a few Galleons on top of it.
"Get these for me. I'm gonna go find Remus; I'll catch up with you guys later," she said.
James shrugged and walked with Sirius and Peter to the check-out counter as Jane walked outside the shop. She looked around Diagon Alley and a sad little smile crept over her face when she saw Remus sitting at a table outside of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour pushing around a sundae with a spoon.
Jane walked over to a small stand where a boy was selling Daily Prophets, and she bought one. Unsurprisingly, the front page was marked with the same terrible things that it always was. She quickly scanned the main story as she walked over to where Remus was sitting.
Jane sat down in the chair opposite of Remus, and he looked up at her. Expecting her to say something, Remus waited patiently, prepared to listen to whatever pep talk she was about to give. However, Jane remained silent, her face buried in the paper. After a few moments of complete silence, Remus pushed his melting ice cream away from him and stared at Jane intently.
"What do you—"
"Did you know," Jane interrupted loudly, stamping out his voice with her own, "that the Auror's Office actually caught two Death Eater's?"
Remus shot her an annoyed look.
"Yeah," he said, "everyone knows. It's been all over the papers for days."
"Let's see. They've been tried with five counts of murder and the torture of a Muggle child," Jane said.
"Yeah, I know," Remus said, not really caring to hear again about the terrible things these people had done.
"Says here he's only eight-years-old," Jane said. "Says it almost killed him."
"Jane, I—"
"'When asked about the torture of the Muggle child,'" Jane read, "'Carrington laughed and explained the event in detail with a smile on his face.'"
"Jane, shut up!" Remus said, not wanting to hear any more.
Jane placed the paper on the table and pointed to the pictures of the two Death Eater's on the front page.
"That! That is what a monster is," Jane said. "Monsters are people like this. Monsters are the ones that like to hurt and kill. Monsters are people like Bill Carrington and Thomas Boyd who murder innocent people and torture defenceless children and then laugh about it. And Remus, don't you ever put yourself in the same category as people like that. You are nothing like them; in fact, you're the furthest thing from it."
Remus sighed.
"There are different kinds of monsters, Jane," he said, pushing the Prophet away from him.
"You have a condition that you can't control. In what world does that make you a monster?" Jane asked him quietly.
"You don't understand," Remus said.
"No, I don't," Jane said truthfully, "but I know no one should hate them-self for something they can't help."
"Let the record show that Janie is completely right for once in our lives," came Sirius' voice.
Jane rolled her eyes at Sirius as James set her Quidditch boots in front of her.
"Come on, Moony," James said, "you're a great guy! You're the furthest thing from a monster there is."
"Yeah, if anything, Janie's the real monster here," Sirius said.
Jane rolled her eyes for what felt like the millionth time that week.
"Sirius, no one cares about your stupid Beater's bat. I destroyed it; you bought a new one. Everything's okay, so shut up."
"See!" Sirius exclaimed, pointing at Jane. "That's exactly what I'd expect to hear from a heartless wench."
Remus cracked a small smile in spite of himself.
"I saw that!" Sirius accused happily causing Remus to laugh a bit.
"See, you know you aren't a monster; you're just being mopey," Sirius said, pulling Remus' half-eaten sundae to him.
"Is that so?" Remus asked rhetorically, slapping Sirius' hands away and retrieving his ice cream.
"Ah, come on! It's not like you were eating it!" Sirius complained.
Jane smiled at the look of amusement on Remus' face, and it suddenly occurred to her that she had some of the best friends in the world. Not that she hadn't ever realised this before, for she had many times, but it never ceased to amaze her that she had friends like these. Friends that could make each other smile or feel better at the drop of a hat; friends that genuinely cared about each other.
They were friends that listened and tried to understand even when they couldn't possibly fathom what each other were going through. They were friends that would figure out how to pull off some of the most dangerous and tedious Transfiguration magic just so that Remus didn't have to transform alone every month. They were friends that would drag Jane to her therapy sessions even when she hated them for it, and they were the type of friends that would tie the Aaron Ashbys of each other's lives to goal posts and strip them naked because nobody messed with the people they cared about.
They looked after each other, and in some cases, better than their own families did. And in a way, they made up their own little family. They knew each other like the back of their hands. Hell, by now they'd memorised what the back of each other's hands looked like and could pick them out of a line-up if need be, and Jane knew that friends like that were something that was hard to come by. And whenever it occurred to her just how truly amazing her friends were, she felt like one of the luckiest people on the planet.